


In The Dark

by ultrawafflehouse



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Agender Character, Agender Crona, Crona Week 2016, Gen, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Post-Anime, Songfic, They/Them Crona
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-09-06 13:02:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8752597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultrawafflehouse/pseuds/ultrawafflehouse
Summary: Crona stiffened their jaw, pressed their tongue against their teeth, stiffened every muscle in their body in a self-defeating fight to gain control of themself. It will be alright, it will be alright, it will be alright, it will be alright.Of course, they knew fear as a childhood friend. The cycle of it, ebbing and flowing with the whims of - well, mostly of Medusa - was nothing new to them. Sometimes, though, it was difficult to keep in check. Especially when they were attempting to let go of it for truly the first time.In the far distance, watery beneath the blood rushing past their ears, they heard the rumbling of a car leaving Death City.And they knew they couldn’t stay a moment longer.-Playlist/Songfic + Art collab with happyisahabit on Tumblr, originally for Crona Week 2016 but didn't finish in time.XXX ABANDONED WORK XXX





	1. Color Me Clear

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this back in January for a Crona Week event on Tumblr, but didn't finish it in time to post. I've decided to try and finish the remaining chapters and post them up here anyways.
> 
> This is a songfic based on a playlist I made here, with cover art by happyisahabit on Tumblr, who you should definitely check out: https://8tracks.com/lheai/in-the-dark

Chapter 1 - "Backyard" by Of Monsters And Men

_I live the life of letting go_   
_Under a starlit night_   
_I wrap myself in thin sheet of ice_   
_Up there, the stars are crystal lights_

 

It was quiet inside the Evans-Albarn residence at this hour. However, quiet did not mean restful. Perhaps no one knew that truth better than Crona.

Soul had been the one to suggest that they crash there until other arrangements had been made outside of the DWMA dungeons. After all, Crona had more than proven their loyalty to the school in the fight against Medusa - it would have been outrageous to continue treating them as a prisoner. It had been a few days since then….

No, they reminded themself, it had been nearly a month. And they were still taking up Soul’s bedroom, vacating Soul himself to the couch. _For a whole month._ Crona swallowed hard past the lumpy, pulsing ache in their throat and tried to steady their shaking breaths. _Stay calm. Breathe deeply and evenly. Take in your surroundings._ Maka had taught them these things so they could learn to keep calm. To no avail.

_Well, that’s not a fair assessment,_ Crona thought. They had all but forgotten those first few days here, or even the times before in their imprisonment, when the nightmares had left them screaming out for help and swinging at thin air. Now, there was fear, but subdued. They clutched the blankets tighter around themself. Now, fear presented itself as a silent, pounding heart and a swiveling head, checking the shadows for the monsters or their mother. Crona’s fear was coming back around under their own control.

Of course, they knew fear as a childhood friend. The cycle of it, ebbing and flowing with the whims of - well, mostly of Medusa - was nothing new to them. Sometimes, though, it was difficult to keep in check. Especially when they were attempting to let go of it for truly the first time.

It was quiet inside Soul and Maka’s apartment. However, it didn’t comfort Crona in the least. Not even with the hall light on and the window open.

The rustling of the sheets and squeaking of the mattress were magnified beyond reason, leaving Crona’s ears ringing. They were torn between moving painstakingly slowly and jumping out of bed to get it over with; they mediated with quick, staccato movements - a squeak and then freezing in place like a statue - a bump and a moment of silence to recover - sliding out onto the tiled floor and then trying to stand firmly while bracing themself against the noisy bed with only their fingertips. Panic’s fingers crept up their chest and caressed their throat; their heart beat wildly against their lungs, and their short, frightened pants hit their windpipe and left it cold. A sour, acid feeling hit their abdomen, somewhere right beneath their diaphragm. Crona stiffened their jaw, pressed their tongue against their teeth, stiffened every muscle in their body in a self-defeating fight to gain control of themself. _It will be alright, it will be alright, it will be alright, it will be alright._

In the far distance, watery beneath the blood rushing past their ears, they heard the rumbling of a car leaving Death City.

And they knew they couldn’t stay a moment longer.


	2. Mother, Listen To My Heart

Chapter 2 - "Dark Days" by the Punch Brothers

 _Mother, listen to my heart_  
_Mother, listen to my heart_  
_Just as one beat ends, another starts_  
_You can hear no matter where you are_

 

It was quiet inside the Gorgon residence at this hour. However, quiet did not mean safe. Perhaps no one knew that truth better than Crona.

They didn’t understand why, but ever since their mother had stuck all the needles in them and filled them up with the thick, black liquid like ink, the sound of blood rushing past their ears now carried voices underneath it. It was like there was somebody else inside their veins, inside their heart, speaking to them. Sometimes the voice only whispered. Sometimes it murmured. Other times, and it was happening more and more lately, it screamed, so loud that Crona was sure Medusa heard it. But their mother never seemed to acknowledge it, so maybe they were just imagining things. “An imaginary friend,” that was what Medusa had said, and she was probably right. Medusa was older and smarter than Crona. She knew all about the world, and she knew, Crona guessed, that blood doesn’t speak.

This didn’t stop the voice from teasing and taunting. Sometimes it made Crona’s heart hurt, squeezing and expanding and twisting inside their chest as they endured the deafening screeches - “LET ME OUT, LET ME OUT, LET ME OUT, I WANNA SEE, I WANNA SEE, I WANNA SEE.”

There was nothing to see in Crona’s room. There wasn’t even a window to see out of, just the hard, tiled floor and the walls. It was always dark there. They didn’t know what the voice wanted to see, or expected to see in that place.

 _Maybe it wants to see me,_ Crona thought - _it’s never seen me before, has it?_ Trembling, they uncoiled their arms from around their knees.

The floor was cold and felt like marble against the pads of their fingertips. They gingerly pushed themself forward, out of the corner of the room and into the center. _When it comes out, I don’t want it to be crowded,_ Crona thought. _I need to remember how we treat guests._ They stopped to consider for a moment. In fact, they weren’t sure if they had ever truly entertained a guest with Medusa. Sure, there had been guests, and Crona had helped prepare for their arrival, but… had they ever met a guest? They knew guests as mere muffled voices and footfalls, strains of laughter and the clinking of dishes heard faintly from the dining room… but always distant, never present. And certainly never in Crona’s own room.

Their blood was pounding now, practically stretching against their veins, but in spite of the pain Crona couldn’t help but smile out of sheer excitement. Perhaps their first guest could also be their first friend.


	3. Was Held In Chains But Now I'm Free

Chapter 3 - "O Children" by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

 _Hey, little train! Wait for me!_  
_I once was blind but now I see_  
_Have you left a seat for me?_  
_Is that such a stretch of the imagination?_  
  
_Hey, little train! Wait for me!_  
_I was held in chains but now I'm free_  
_I'm hanging in there, don't you see_  
_In this process of elimination_

 

Crona let out a cry. The memory scattered, and they blinked away the remaining black spots. They were now, somehow, in the hallway outside of the apartment, slumped against the wall. They looked down and saw their jacket, soft brown boots, tee shirt and jeans - all newly bought, courtesy of Spirit Albarn. Strapped across their chest was Maka’s messenger bag.

Halting fingers opened the clasp and raised up the flap, to then shuffle through the bag’s contents. Apartment key. Crona’s cell phone. Notepad with a list of emergency numbers. Another set of keys - Maka’s keys, they realized. Assorted pens. Maka’s wallet.

They couldn’t remember which things they must have packed and which ones had already been in the bag. Namely, the wallet. Maka had given Crona some cash and change to carry with them in case of emergencies, but not enough to, say, buy a train ticket. That was their destination, Crona realized: the Death City train station. Had they stolen Maka’s wallet?

Fear seized them once again, this time with a shudder. How could they…?

 _Still…_ they rationalized desperately, they knew where they wanted to go, and they needed money to get there. Even against their tugging conscience, they pulled the wallet out of Maka’s bag and snapped it open.

Yes, there was just enough. Crona shuddered again, but steadied themself and slipped the wallet back into the bag.

 

The first time they met Ragnarok was agonizing. Crona remembered the pulling, stretching, morphing of their own skin, how it burst open and their blood gushed out, how they screamed and screamed and reached behind them, clawing desperately at the protrusion. “Go away, go away, go _away,_ ” they sobbed; their blood was a living, moving thing of its own, no controlling it, no stopping it, no stopping -

Laughter behind it all, the noise and the pain, then a familiar voice, weaving in and out of their conscious hearing. When they managed to focus themself, Crona looked up and saw their mother standing in the doorway, looking as though she had won a prize. “It worked,” Medusa stated. She didn’t move to stop the pain.

Crona let out a sob, felt the corners of their mouth stretch down and back, felt their jaw clench and stiffen, felt every movement in every muscle of their body send stabbing pain through them. It was like they were bleeding everywhere, and every inch of their skin was covered in it, sticky and red.

The image replayed itself. _Sticky and… Red? But -_

Teeth chattering, clanging and grinding against each other, Crona looked down at their hands. They were sticky. Covered in black, like ink.

“My blood is black,” Crona whispered. They had almost forgotten.

Something hit the side of their head. They exhaled a weak gasp, exhausted and still in so much pain.

“Hey!”

Crona knew that voice, knew it from days of it screaming and pounding against the inside of their body, telling them terrible things that they didn’t want to hear. And now it was here, in their room, and they didn’t know what to do about it. _I’m the one who let it out, anyways. I should learn to deal with it._

They twisted their neck and gazed behind them at the creature. A demon, Crona thought. All black and white with these big eyes staring back at them. Again, it spoke.

“Hey! The name’s Ragnarok! Who are you, anyway?” It swung a fist at Crona again, and they instinctively dove away, bringing the creature with them. Crona and Ragnarok both sailed facefirst into the floor.

Crona cried and curled up, covered their head as the blows kept coming from the demon. “How stupid are you? Didja really think you could get away from me? That hurt, you know! Why’d you do that? Hey! What’s your name? HEY!...”

 

“HEY! Crona!”

They yelped and nearly fell over. Crona shook their head, clearing away the flashback once again, and found themself standing in a little shelter. Dimly lit. Faded map. Hard plastic benches. What time was it again? They saw the analog clock hanging on the wall behind the ticket counter but couldn’t seem to read it.

“Hey stupid!” Ragnarok tapped Crona’s forehead. “Your train’s here! What are we doing up, anyways?”

Crona, still disoriented, finally located the train, standing still with the door open, waiting on them. Ragnarok retreated back into their bloodstream and they approached the train.

“Ticket?”

They handed it over and stepped on board.


	4. The Sixth Station

Chapter 4 - "The Sixth Station" by Joe Hisaishi

_Instrumental_

 

Slowly, Crona’s consciousness came into ever-hazy focus. Outside the train was pitch dark but for the light of the moon, and inside was lit overhead only by two dismal rows of dim fluorescent lights, which cast wraithlike shadows over the conductor’s face and left the floor like a dark abyss, into which an unsuspecting person could fall and fall and fall….

But to Crona, all their surroundings seemed to glow and shimmer. Their eyes darted around the car, unable to zero in on any particular subject. Nor did there seem to be a particular subject of their story. They themself seemed to move and shift, appearing and disappearing behind a curtain, as the world around them moved on, dizzyingly. But at least the world seemed to survive. It survived with or without them. Again, Crona blinked out of the mirage.

Blinking out was what they did. When things got hard, and painful, and unbearable, Crona simply disappeared for a moment, or an hour, or a week. Losing huge chunks of time - but really, what could they be missing? Another murder? Another fight? Another experiment? Crona shivered. Or maybe they averted their mind’s eyes from another crime, one which they themself committed alone, unprovoked by an unforgiving mother or any unkindness at all: stealing from a friend.

Medusa had always said that Crona was ungrateful, sniveling, and selfish. “No wonder,” they murmured. Of course she’d been right. What kind of a person stole money from the only real friends they’d ever had?

“No wonder what?” Ragnarok chimed in, but Crona didn’t answer.

 

Crona shouldn’t have been lonely during those years. They had Ragnarok. They had their mother. Sometimes, they even made themself useful.

But it was never quite enough. Even the few and far between praises that Medusa gave were laced with that sense of incompetence, of expectation. Medusa’s love for Crona was conditional. Crona clenched their fist, trying to remember.

Miss Marie helped them with these things. Relearning their own childhood was something like rereading a book from the beginning only to find that all the chapters had been rearranged.

They knew Medusa was not truly a mother to them. They knew now that they had been mistreated. But they were still learning this new vocabulary, new definitions for “love” and “praise”. Not what they had experienced before.

So many lonely days spent locked away within Medusa’s influence, so many that they seemed to stretch on infinitely as if Hell had come first for Crona, then life. It still made them wonder whether they had done something to earn this just reward.

They clutched their fingers tight around Maka’s messenger bag and they knew they were right.


	5. Via Purifico

Chapter 5 - "Via Purifico" by Nobuo Uematsu

_Instrumental_

 

“I’m very disappointed in you, Crona….”

Before the voice even registered, Crona was already on the ground of the train car, kicking desperately as they tried to back themself underneath the seat. The train conductor glanced their way warily as Crona simultaneously tried to cross their arms over their face and twist their neck around to find Medusa on the train.  _ Somewhere, she’s somewhere, she is here, she found me, she’s going to take me again, she’s going to tell all of my friends that I stole, they’re all going to hate me, they’ll never save me again - Please forgive me, Medusa - ! _

No matter where they looked, Medusa was nowhere to be seen. “Always in the corner of my vision,” Crona mumbled, feeling mucus and tears starting to stream down their face once again as so many times before. “Right in the corner of my eye, she hides there, waiting in the shadow of the corner of my room, and Ragnarok is always behind me - ” Crona tugged at their hair madly, panic gaining control of them, and they started to make a sound between laughing and sobbing, silent banshee screams of high-pitched breath sucked in through their throat like a bent straw. “I’ll never see them, I’ll never catch them, they always find me….”

Their blubbering words continued aimlessly, dissolving into less and less comprehensible ideas until Crona was left with only one thing….

 

“P-please, Medusa, please forgive me, please, forgive me, please, please….”

The sickly-sweetness of the response made bile approach Crona’s throat, though they weren’t sure why.

“Oh, Crona…. Dear, you always say that…. Don’t you know, I’ve been so gracious to you?”

Crona sobbed into the floor. “M-Medusa, please, I’ll do an-anything, please….”

An edge of tartness entered the sugary molasses of Medusa’s voice above Crona’s head. “Crona. You directly disobeyed me. I can’t just let you do that…. You should honor me….”

Medusa’s hand came down to rest on Crona’s back and they nearly flinched away from it. “Please…. I -” They hiccuped and gulped down a sob. “I love you….”

The two were frozen in time for a moment, Crona felt; Medusa stiffened and so did they, their bones chilling suddenly like ice, but they didn’t have the nerve to allow themself to shiver in such a lowly position before Medusa. She had even deigned to touch them.

When the tension of the moment finally broke, Medusa’s hand slowly lifted away from Crona. They didn’t move a muscle until Medusa spoke.

“Look at me.”

Crona obeyed with hesitation, with apprehension still hardening their joints.

Medusa seemed almost lost for just a split second, but this second was so short Crona could have mistaken it for a dream. When her eyes locked onto Crona’s, they knew that there was no doubt in the words that followed.

“This is not how love should be, Crona.”

A pause. Crona stopped breathing at all as they stared into their mother’s catlike amber eyes.

“If you loved me, you would obey me. Always.”

 

Swallowing hard, drawing breath into their lungs, Crona found themself once again on the floor of the train car. The conductor stood a distance away, his eyes sweeping over Crona’s position.  _ Of course, he has no idea how to react, _ Crona thought miserably.  _ I’m just being a nuisance. _

Crona sensed that the train had come to a stop, and when they sat up and gathered Maka’s belongings the conductor pulled a lever and the car door swiveled open to the outside. Lightly humid air flowed in, a scent of lake water and flora hinted on its back.

This was their stop; they knew without even looking out the windows. Avoiding the conductor’s gaze, Crona shuffled out the door onto the station platform.

Above, the clouds covered the night sky. The only light at the station was fluorescent and blinking.

Gazing up into darkness, Crona murmured, “She always finds me.”


	6. Away From The Life That You Always Knew

Chapter 6 - "Come Away To The Water" by Maroon 5 feat. Rozzi Crane

_Come away little lass_  
_Come away to the water_  
_Away from the life that you always knew_

_Come away little light_  
_Come away to the darkness_  
_In the shade of the night we’ll come looking for you_

 

Crona’s feet dangled from the edge of the dock, limp but stilled, inches above the murky lake water. Their eyes seemed locked onto a spot under the surface. They imagined the icy chill of plunging into the darkness, the slick, slimy scum wrapping around their limbs and dragging them down, down, until they sunk into the sickeningly soft mud at the lake’s bottom.

They imagined, with shocking vindictiveness, Ragnarok crying out, punching and scraping to pull them back up to the surface, to no avail. The two would choke on algae and become fish food together, just as they had been trapped together in the same body for all these years, never able to properly draw their lines.

Crona shivered, unable to swallow their own hatred of this crowded body. Ragnarok had lost power over them, but it hadn’t gone away, and Crona knew it never would. What Medusa had done to them - they could never go back to the way they were before. Goodness knew, they wished they could. Maybe they had always been miserable and lonely, but they never asked for the salt in their wounds, the incessant and intrusive reminders that they were _different,_ they were _cursed,_ they had been _used,_ never meant to serve their own wants or wishes but just to be a tool for - for this witch - whom they were supposed to call their _mother?_

The skittish, fearful shivering turned to angry trembling. Crona had wasted so many years becoming just the object of destruction that they had been created to become, and they had cause so much suffering because of it. Even after Medusa no longer controlled them, it seemed that all they knew how to do was cause trouble.

Stealing money? Running away from their first true home, and their first true friends? The bitter, metallic taste of betrayal entered the back of their throat, and they fixed their gaze even more stubbornly onto the lake’s invisible bottom. “I should never have been born,” Crona intoned softly.

 

Crona had visited this lake before, once. Spirit had brought them here with Maka for a fishing trip one weekend morning, and they stayed until noon, when the sun had reached its peak in the cloudless azure blue above and Mr. Albarn had decided that there were no more fish to be caught.

As Spirit packed up his fishing gear, Crona had approached Maka where she stood on the edge of the dock, looking pensively over the lake to the trees beyond, eyes drifting up to the dazzling sky and back down to the rippling surface of the water, following the tiny waves that lapped up onto the shores. Crona stared into the water then, too, and it seemed that they really could see all the way to the bottom. How clear the water was then, how devoid of impurities, a shimmering pool of bright blue second only to the sky in its quiet glory.

Crona stole a glance at Maka and blushed when her eyes flicked over to meet theirs and lit up with a smile. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she said.

Crona blinked twice and turned their eyes to the lake once again. They saw beauty in the cheerful bouncing of sunlight on the water’s surface, but when their eyes returned to Maka her face was obscured by dancing black and purple-red spots. Crona rubbed their eyes resentfully, but still tried to respond with all the vitality they saw in Maka’s eyes, or all that they could muster.

“Yes, it is.”

They didn’t look back at Maka, but out of the corner of their eye they saw her tilt her head slightly. They tried to care and to not care at once, the endless battle within themself coming to a head for only the umpteenth time. _They should feel bad._ They were only trying to be civil. _They had hurt Maka._ They hadn’t done anything wrong, and Maka could reassure them of that anytime they needed her to.

The next time Maka spoke, Crona realized that they were lacing and unlacing their fingers and wringing them all together, like a twisted game of cat’s cradle. Anxiety, as always, had taken over their body, and they didn’t know how to control it.

“I haven’t been to this lake in a long, long, time,” Maka had said. “Papa and I came here before, when I was little.” She looked at Crona with soft green eyes, turned nearly aqua by all the blue, blue, blue that surrounded them. “We went out in a paddleboat - Papa rented it from a boat shop nearby. We stayed out on the water for hours. I wouldn’t let him take us back in to shore.”

Maka smiled so warmly at the memory that Crona’s hands stilled and their shoulders lost some of their tension. Their lips even started to mirror hers, pulling up just a little at the corners. At this small encouragement, Maka plowed on.

“Once he finally got us out of the water, we had a picnic on the dock. Papa packed all the food himself. I remember - He brought us lemon bars from the little bakery in Death City.” The suggestion made a sweet and citrusy taste-memory burst across Crona’s tongue. Spirit had taken Crona and Maka to a bakery and gotten them lemon bars once. They must have been the same ones, Crona was sure of it. Maka grinned at Crona, then at the lake and the sky. “That was on a day just like this.”

Crona had felt the whisper of the warm lake breeze on their neck, and it made their figure slacken rather than shudder. Maka continued, the ends of her pigtails fluttering in the wind, “Things have changed so much since then. But this place…. It always reminds me of something beautiful.”

 

_Beautiful?_

What was beautiful?

Killing wasn’t beautiful.

Fighting wasn’t beautiful.

Black blood was not beautiful.

These things were all that Crona had known. What made their life beautiful?

Even this lake, under the cloudy morning-dusk sky, seemed to loom with foreboding. No one could find beauty here in this widening void. Not even Maka. Crona was sure of it.

Ragnarok’s voice had fallen silent for a long while now, given up on awakening Crona from the darkening trance they found themself in. There was nothing left for them here. No stretch of the imagination could drag them away from all that they had done, and all that they had been created to do. Medusa always came back, if not in person then in their head. Crona’s head was full of the witch, the past, the blood, red and black and swirling below them in the water of the once-hopeful lake. All things turned to despair eventually.

How could Crona fight it? They’d never be able to win against such a fate. Their memories made that much crystal clear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *screams into the void* sorry i'm so terrible at updating chapters but idk if anyone is actually keeping up with this fic anyhow but i promise i'm trying


	7. Hands On Fire

Chapter 7 - "Angel On Fire" by Antony and the Johnsons

_Haunted, I'm swimming in the Dead Sea_  
_Try as I may to shine in the darkness_  
_Warm my heart, set my hands on fire_  
_Hair on fire, dress on fire_  
_Ooh I'm an angel, an angel on fire_  
_And I'm burning to escape the cold_  
_To escape the cold_

 

“Crona!” Maka’s voice rang hoarse and breathless over the grassy lakefront. Everything was dark, nearly pitch black. It was almost six in the morning. Soul had woken her up around two, saying he’d heard someone slip past him in the living room and Crona was nowhere to be found. Without thinking, Maka had jumped out of bed, burst into Soul’s bedroom and found it empty, and run out of their apartment with her cell phone in hand, hardly stopping to put on her slippers as she dialed Spirit’s number. She hadn’t even thought to get her messenger bag; by the time their search party of Spirit, Maka, Soul, Marie, and Stein returned bleary-eyed to Soul’s and Maka’s apartment to search for clues, it was four-thirty.

As soon as Maka had realized what was missing, she knew to follow the trains, and she had a pretty good idea of which stops to check. There was the opposite side of Death City, where the Death By Pastry bakery was nestled among the other small shops and the tiny park that Crona was enamoured with; the quiet little suburb outside the city where they spent a day window shopping; then, a ways further out from the city, Echo Lake, where the Albarns had taken Crona on a fishing trip their first weekend at Soul’s and Maka’s place.

Maka, running on almost no sleep but fueled by worry, was first to leap off the train the second the door opened and jog in the direction of the lake. There was an odd ache in her chest, not just from her pounding heart but from what she sensed was fatigue. She blamed herself for not taking better care of her things, and she cursed herself for not doing more to help Crona. _They could be anywhere. They could be hurt, or in trouble. Medusa -_

Maka shook away the thought and called Crona’s name. She had to find them. They had to be here, surely, it would only make sense.

She couldn’t hear her voice echo; it was as if it was lost to the thick darkness that was enveloping the lake quickly as the pre-dawn twilight fell into black. But as her pupils dilated to drink in the deep purple of the landscape, she could just make out the lake’s edge and the dock, and on the edge of that dock sat a figure.

Maka rushed towards the person as much as she could, trying her best not to trip. She thought she heard Spirit call out behind her, but she ignored him as Crona’s silhouette came into focus.

“Crona!” They spun around, features still shrouded in near-darkness but Maka could still detect the pink hair, wide eyes, and hunched shoulders of her friend.

She breathed a small sigh of relief and came to the edge of the dock to slide down beside Crona. The words spilled out of her. “Crona, are you alright? We’ve been worried sick, we searched for you all night. Did something happen? Are you hurt?” She leaned over just enough to see that her messenger bag was nestled safely next to Crona; thank goodness that it hadn’t been lost, and she trusted Crona that its contents were still intact.

Crona didn’t answer for a moment, and Maka’s heart dropped to the pit of her stomach in anticipation. Still, she restrained herself from pushing Crona any further than they were ready to answer.

Finally, they spoke. “I - I’m sorry, Maka.”

“Don’t,” Maka started, shaking her head, but Crona plowed on through her words.

“I just got scared, and I betrayed you, and I haven’t done anything right even since I came to your apartment” - they hiccupped - “And I just don’t know if I can do this anymore, Maka. I can’t do anything good. It’s just what I was made to do, is cause harm to other people, and no matter what I do I just can’t seem to escape it.”

Maka wrapped her arms around Crona’s shaking shoulders and felt their tears dripping down and soaking her shirt. The light had grown dimmer than ever; Maka almost worried that she’d lost her vision, and she was sure that if she waved her own hand in front of her face it would be undetectable. The only sense she had that Crona was still beside her was the warmth of their body against hers, and their trembling in her embrace.

Crona sniffed, their words hanging in the silence over the dock. “I’m so sorry, Maka.”


End file.
